


Wrong

by storyteller0311



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Arrow 100, Arrow 5x08, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 06:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8701051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyteller0311/pseuds/storyteller0311
Summary: A speculative fic in conjunction with the 100th episode of Arrow.





	

Oliver bolted upright in his seat at the sound of the doorbell, forgetting for a moment where he was. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he leaned forward in his chair to glance out the window toward the driveway below. The normally empty space was bustling with delivery trucks and personnel, readying the Queen Mansion for his wedding.

His wedding.

With a sigh Oliver leaned back, letting his body sink into the armchair. His brief, unplanned nap had done nothing to lessen the dread that filled him. Scrubbing his hands across his face, he willed his mind to focus on anything but the anxiety that had flooded his body that morning and never dissipated. If anything, the feeling had only grown as the day progressed, sending a stabbing sense of panic through him every time he was reminded that his wedding was only a matter of hours away. 

He had escaped to his childhood bedroom after lunch, hoping that the silence would give him some temporary peace before he needed to start getting ready. He had woken that morning in a good mood – calm, excited. He was moving forward, taking the ultimate step in growing up. And he was happy. Because he was determined to make this work, to finally leave the old Ollie behind and be the kind of man he had tried again and again to be.

But that calm had evaporated quickly. And in its place had descended a feeling of…wrong.

_Oliver stretched the sleep out of his limbs as he walked from the bed to the bathroom door. A smile spread across his face at the soft singing coming from within, muffled by the sound of the shower. A strange feeling – half excitement, half apprehension – filled him as he realized that after today he’d be hearing that sound for the rest of his life._

_Entering the steam-filled bathroom, Oliver pulled off his boxers and quietly stepped into the shower behind his fiancé. Her blonde hair was pinned up in a large clip, exposing the long column of her neck that was almost always obscured by her long hair._

_“Good morning,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. “Will you marry me?”_

_His fiancé stepped out of his embrace and turned around, lifting her left hand toward him. “I think I already answered that,” she said with a soft chuckle, the large diamond ring sparkling on her finger._

_The smile on Oliver’s face fell as he moved his eyes from his fiancé’s hand to her face, her words reverberating oddly in his head. A strange feeling flushed through him, an emotion he couldn’t quite name._

_Shaking his head slightly, he pulled Laurel to him once again and let the hot water cascade over them. He had loved Laurel for as long as he could remember, and despite the rocky road that had led them here, he was happy with his decision to marry her._

_Wasn’t he?_

_The strange feeling grew as his thoughts wandered, as Laurel stroked her hands up and down his back._

_She had forgiven his indiscretions, his faults. And he had forgiven hers. They were meant to be._

_Laurel tipped her head back and began tracing her lips along his jaw. Dipping his head down, he closed his eyes and captured her lips in his._

_Almost instantly, a stabbing sick feeling tore through his gut causing him to stop and stagger backwards._

_“Oliver?” Laurel asked, concern lacing her voice. “What’s the matter?”_

_“I –” Oliver paused, searching for an explanation that wouldn’t alarm his already nervous fiancé. “I, I just remembered that I promised Thea I’d have breakfast with her this morning…you know, something about it being my last morning as just her big brother and not a husband.”_

_“Oh,” Laurel responded, a slightly confused look on her face. “Ok. Well, have fun. Remind her that the hairdresser arrives at 2.”_

_“I will,” Oliver replied. “I’ll see you later,” he said, stepping out of the shower and headed back towards the bedroom._

_“I’ll be the one wearing white!” she called, as he retreated._

_As he toweled off in the bedroom, he tried to ignore the lingering sick feeling still bubbling through him. He didn’t have time for this. It was supposed to be the happiest day of his life._

_But, why did he suddenly have the feeling that something was very, very wrong?_

Oliver pushed the memory of that morning out of his mind and glanced at the clock on the wall across the room. It was later than he realized and if he wanted to be on time to his own wedding he needed to emerge from his hiding place.

Standing, he took one last glance around the room that had been his domain for so many years, and that now was more a relic of the past than a place of comfort.

As he turned toward the door, it abruptly opened.

“Oh! Sorry, I thought this was the bath– Mr. Queen!”

Oliver looked at the person who had burst unexpectedly into his childhood bedroom and let a grin cross his face. Felicity Palmer was a bundle of energetic genius that he’d been secretly in awe of since the moment his father had hired her. He didn’t think he had ever met someone as smart, or as funny.

“Felicity,” he said, “how many times do we have to go over this? Please. Call me Oliver. Mr. Queen is my father.”

“Right,” she said, taking a small step into the room and clutching her small purse in front of her. “But…technically you’re Mr. Queen too and you are going to be CEO of Queen Consolidated soon so you’ll need to get used to it. I mean, at least you don’t have to change your name. Believe me, that has been a nightmare. I should have just stayed Felicity Smoak like I wanted, but it meant a lot to Ray. But no one seems to remember that I’m Felicity Palmer now and I didn’t fill out all that name change paperwork for nothing…and oh my god, I’m just babbling away which is not what you need right now, so I’m going to stop in 3…2…1.”

Oliver couldn’t help it. He laughed.

At first, Felicity looked taken aback but pretty soon she was laughing too. Albeit a little nervously.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, not wanting his father’s star junior executives to think he was making fun of her. “I– I needed that.”

“Nerves, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah…” he said, blowing a deep breath out.

“It’s normal,” she responded, “I went through an entire bottle of Tums on the day of my wedding – a fact that you absolutely did not need to know…And on that note, I’m going to leave you to get ready for your wedding and find the actual bathroom, which this obviously not.”

“It’s, uh, three doors down on the right,” Oliver replied, as she turned to leave.

“Thanks,” she responded.

“Hey Felicity –” he said, “thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. “And don’t worry about all this. It’s just the icing on the cake, so to speak. As long as you’re marrying the woman you love…that’s all that matters.”

Felicity had barely walked out the door when a succession of strange images flooded Oliver’s mind. Felicity sitting behind a desk, him nervously approaching her in an alley outside his father’s old steel factory, Felicity in a red dress at his favorite Italian restaurant.

The flashes ended as quickly as they began and with them, the feeling that something was wrong returned ten-fold.

His mind was just playing tricks on him, he thought as he walked out into the hall. Just nerves.

It wasn’t until he reached the room where his tux was stored that he realized the feeling of dread had completely disappeared with Felicity in the room.

* * *

Oliver burst out the back door of the Queen Mansion onto the lawn, visions of Felicity Palmer filling his head and causing a warring sense of panic and calm to simultaneously rush through him. Felicity telling him she loved him, Felicity wearing his mother’s engagement ring, Felicity in a wedding dress, him telling her she was his always. 

Laurel had slapped him. Hard. But he’d had to do it. He had needed to ask if they were doing the right thing. Because it didn’t feel right. And that was when the visions began.

And that’s when he knew.

It wasn’t right. In fact it was very, very wrong.

And he had a sneaking feeling that this wasn’t real.

“Oliver!” His mother shouted across the lawn, following him as fast as her formal gown allowed. “Oliver, what are you doing?”

Oliver stopped, but didn’t turn, afraid that if he looked at his mother in that moment he might lose his nerve.

He had a feeling she wasn’t real either. That a lot of things, a lot of people he had experienced that day weren’t real.

“Oliver,” she said in a quieter, calmer tone as she came to stand next to him. “What is going on? Where on Earth are you going? All the guests are here – Laurel is waiting–”

“No, she’s not,” Oliver murmured, looking up at his mother’s confused face. “I just got done talking to her. The wedding is off. You can send everyone home.”

“What are you talking about, my darling boy?” Moira asked, quickly hugging Oliver before pulling back to study his face. “This is just cold feet. You’ll come inside and apologize to Laurel for being rash and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“I can’t,” Oliver said. “It’s wrong. This is all wrong.”

“Oliver, you can’t do this. You have responsibilities – you made a choice. You love Laurel and you chose to ask her to marry you. You have to honor that choice–”

“No, Mom,” he murmured, as another flash – no not a flash – a memory came front and center in his mind. “There’s no choice to make.”

* * *

 “How did you know?”

Oliver looked up from the glass in his hand, the vodka swirling as he turned to find Felicity standing several feet from his seat at the bunker’s conference table.

“Know what?” Oliver asked, setting the glass down on the table.

“That it wasn’t real. You never really said – you just mentioned that something felt off – and I thought that it might be important to know, you know if we’re ever kidnapped by scary mean aliens again which I really hope never ever happens–” she rambled, moving closer to where he sat.

“It was you,” Oliver said, cutting her off.

“What?” she breathed out, as her body turned stock still next to him. “What do you mean it was me? I wasn’t even there–”

“Of course you were there,” Oliver replied.

“But–” Felicity started.

“I – it was…little things at first,” he murmured. “Things that I didn’t even realize until I had pretty much figured it out. Everything was too shiny, everyone too happy. But there were people who seemed out of place, cracks in the perfection that were glaring. But mostly it was a feeling I couldn’t shake.”

“A feeling?” Felicity asked, coming to stand behind the chair next to him, her hands gripping the top of the back rest.

“That something was extraordinarily wrong,” Oliver said. “My parents were alive. They were happy. I was getting married. I was happy…but I wasn’t. Everything just felt off…wrong. And then, you walked through the door with your easy smile and your rambles and that feeling went away. But the moment you walked away, there it was again, back 100 times worse.”

Oliver paused, taking in the way Felicity’s hands gripped the top of the chair, her knuckles white.

“And then there were the flashes…”

“Flashes?” she asked, her voice shaking ever so slightly.

“Memories,” he said. “Of our life together. Of this life, the real one.”

Oliver took a deep breath, releasing it slowly before continuing.

“I couldn’t get the feeling out of my head, the wrongness of it all. So I went to Laurel’s room, broke the number 1 groom rule, and saw her in her wedding dress. And that’s when I knew. That it was wrong. Because it was the wrong ring, the wrong dress. The wrong woman.”

“But you could have stayed – with your parents, with Laurel – it would have been an understandable choice–” Felicity murmured.

Oliver stood abruptly and rested his hands over Felicity’s, rubbing his thumbs over where her knuckles held the chair in a death grip.

“Felicity,” he murmured, “it wasn’t real. And I knew. I knew that it wasn’t real. And that it wasn’t right.”

Tears started leaking out of Felicity’s eyes, her bottom lip quivering as he looked at her with increasing intensity.

Bringing his hand up to cup her cheek, Oliver continued. “You, Felicity Smoak, are my always. Not even a perfect fantasy world could change that fact. You are the woman I love. And there was no choice to make.”


End file.
